The Entrepreneur’s Wallet:  A nice comparison of the wallet of someone who runs a company vs. the project manager’s. Mine is actually more like one on the right. I cannot stand clutter.
iTunes get Social, Launches Ping: Earlier this week Apple had a music event, where among other things, they announced an iTunes integrated social network called Ping. They still have not announced a replacement for lala.
I woke up this morning to a very upsetting email that my favorite music service in the cloud, lala, is closing its doors on May 31st. Â As a member since the tail end of 2008 and an avid user of the service, I of course wish it weren’t so; but since Apple bought it earlier this year, it does raise some interesting questions.
Wow! It’s been a while and I apologize. I’ve been keeping busy with Cognition Media (which is finally getting off the ground), but am back on track here. Today starts the first in a series of posts I’ll be writing to help with tech oriented gifts for the 2009 holiday season. Up first is a service I’ve been using for a while now (7-8 months) and am very happy with: lala.
Since 2001, the last time I saw Blink 182 live (in my first ever concert experience), I’ve…
Learned how to develop websites
Gone to over 50 other concerts
Started my own freelance business
Graduated High School
Gone to Ireland
Totaled a car
Held six different jobs
Graduated College with my Bachelor’s
Started and Finished my Masters in Software Engineering
Got my thesis published
Started a company with a friend
I saw them last night in Philly and they were great- I was really excited to see them again after 8 years and they did not disappoint. Travis even topped his drum solo from last time. To get my thoughts from last night on Twitter, you can use this handy search query. If you were there, let me know what you thought!
The other day I was thinking about this: What band shaped music this decade the same way Nirvana did for the 1990’s? There is no denying that Nirvana inspired possibly hundreds of bands, and rock music for a decade. If they didn’t invent grunge, they certainly made it cool. But grunge as the 90’s knew it died out. Rock music has certainly changed (and NOT for the better). And that’s when I realized it. Nickelback (a band I loathe), shaped rock music for this decade.
Nickelback was around in the 90’s but hit the mainstream with their song, “How You Remind Me” in 2001, which is early enough in the decade to inspire other bands. If you’ll remember, “Smells Like Teen Spirit” by Nirvana came out 10 years eariler, in 1991. Since Nickelback hit the scene, lots of other similar (read: exactly the same) bands started popping up. Here is just a short list:
Hinder
Buckcherry
Breaking Benjamin
Thrice
Three Days Grace
Puddle of Mudd
My next question was Why? Well, much like Nirvana, there isn’t a lot of talent in Nickelback. Say what you will about either band, but their music is not hard to play, nor do/did they have any singing ability. It’s easy to imitate and a lot of bands probably figured if Nickelback can play and make it big, so can they. And then they do.
SO if you are sick of all these crappy sounding bands that all sound exactly the same on the radio, you have Nickelback to thank for it. Comments are open.
I’m a little bit surprised I haven’t written about Amazon Mp3 before as I use it quite frequently. My main grip about services like iTunes, the Zune Marketplace, Napster, Ruckus, and nearly every other digital music outlet is that their songs are protected by some form of Digital Rights Management (DRM). You can only transfer them x number of times. You need a username and password to listen to them, or in the case of Ruckus, download for free (as a college student), but only listen to them on your computer. Yes, there was EMusic, but last time I checked their collect was not as diverse as I would have liked. But Amazon Mp3 changes all of that.
Amazon Mp3 offers a full line of music, underground and mainstream, completely DRM-free. It doesn’t expire, there isn’t a set number of transfers, play it on any Mp3 player as much as you’d like. This is the way digital music should be. If I have a CD, I can rip that onto my computer and do with it what I want. Why shouldn’t digital music be the same. But beyond that, their deals are amazing.
Amazon Mp3 offers two types of deals I use regularly (and use twitter to follow): Daily deals, where for a day they will sell a digital CD significantly cheaper (like $2 or 3) and Friday 5, where from Friday until Monday, they pick 5 albums to sell for $5 a pop. Plus, setup couldn’t be easier. Install their downloader, which links to your favorite music player, and when you download mp3s, they automatically get added to your music collection.
I really feel Amazon got digital music right. Freedom, easy of use, and low cost is everything I was looking for. If any online service will get me to stop buying CDs, it’s this one.
It should be no secret that I’m a big music fan. I’m no pro and choose not to review music because generally I like a certain genre and don’t really know what to look for when reviewing an album. That being said, here are three albums I’ve been listening to a lot lately.
The Raconteurs- Consolers of the Lonely
buy from amazon
This is the sophomore album from The Raconteurs, a group made up of some very talented musicians including Jack White of the White Stripes. Every single song on this album is catchy with great lyrics, great story telling and complicated and cohesive musical interludes. Oh, and sweet ass guitar solos. My personal favorites are Rich Kid Blues and Carolina Drama, in which Jack White tells an excellent story about a boy living in South Carolina. While I am usually into heavier music, I highly recommend this album.
Alkaline Trio- Angony & Irony
buy from amazon
Alkaline Trio has been around for quite a while now, but admittedly I’ve only gotten into them in the past few years. This latest album is my favorite and is said to be their most mature. I’d say every song on the album has a recurring theme throughout it, which you can hear in the instrumental parts as well as they lyrics. My favorites include Calling All Skeletons, Over and Out, and Help Me.
Versa Emerge- Perceptions EP
Let me start off by saying I love a girl who can sing, so by default I have a crush on the lead singer of this band. This is their first commercially release EP (I believe), which you can download on District Lines for $4.99. The CD release is set for July 15th from Smart Punk. People say they sound a lot like Paramore, but I feel they have a bit more of a mature sound than Paramore does. You can listen to the entire EP, as well as my favorite song- The Blank Static Screen- on Pure Volume.
On a closing note if you read this and though, ‘Hey- I have similar music interests to this guy,’ you can check me out on Last.fm. I mean if you want to follow me just to cut down my musical tastes, that’s cool too. To each his own, right?
I didn’t write too much about music over the summer due to the fact that I was not really impressed by any new music out there. I did see some kick ass concerts, starting with Incubus and ending with the incredible Projekt Revolutions Tour (Linkin Park, My Chemical Romance, Taking Back Sunday, HIM). However, my summer of no new music is made up for in the first two weeks of school.
Up first is Paramore and their awesome album, Riot!. I am no music reviewer, but they have an awesome sound, and the lead singer, Hayley Williams, has a fantastic and very controlled voice. She is like Avril but with talent. This very young band (the oldest member is 21, Hayley is 18) has some great raw talent and writes some fantastic songs. I listened to their single, Misery Business, and was hooked. You can see just how good they are by checking out their acoustic performances on YouTube.
Up next is Monty Are I and their CD, Wall of People. This band came to my school the first weekend, putting on a really great show, especially considering most of the kids there have never heard of them, myself included. They were energetic and funny; oh, and they rock. They’ve got a great sound of intricate guitar riffs- the classic rock ones, which are highlighted by keyboards and trumpets. Their songs Dublin Waltz and Between the Sheets really showcase this. Another great song is Only the Weak. They introduced it by saying, “This song is about weight lifting and fighting Russians” (a Rocky IV reference) and I think you can really tell they were going for a “Rocky-esq” song. It’s got the build up of songs like Hearts on Fire and Eye of the Tiger, but of course with their spin. Overall, a very enjoyable CD .
These two bands, along with Rise Against, have really impressed me and I have been listening to them non-stop. They were definitely worth the musically dry summer.
It’s been a while since I wrote about music last, and since then I have picked up some pretty good stuff. The number one on my list: Anberlin’s new CD, Cities.
Anberlin- Cities
Anberlin’s Cities is the perfect mix of rock out songs and relaxing songs no matter what you are doing. I’ve listened to the CD at the gym and while getting some serious work done. It helps me focus. Their music has only matured with this CD- they didn’t change their sound or compromise their music for a better record deal. This is Anberlin through and through. But a better Anberlin. I love their first two CDs- Never Take Friendship Personal was great. But with both of those albums, I started listening to just a few select songs. That is not the case with this album. I’ve had it almost a month now, and listen to the whole thing through once a day at least. Among my favorite tracks are Adelaide, A Clamor and a Whisper, Dismantle.Repair and Fin. The later two are the last two tracks (before the bonus stuff) on the album and they really wrap the cd up well. Dismantle.Repair is the final build up before the great cool down that is Fin. All in all, the band brings a lot of new things to the table here, and if you have heard Anberlin in the past, but weren’t sold, this is the album that will do it.
The Rest
Looking beyond Anberlin, I have picked up a multitude of CDs from which I can pick and choose my favorite songs and make a pretty good play list. These CDs include (but are not limited to): Dropkick Murphys, Halifax, Matchbook Romance and a bunch of “Punk Goes” CDs. Halifax as a relatively new band is decent. They have some good songs, like Under Fire, but still, a lot of their songs sound the same. The same goes for Dropkick Murphys, who a admittedly picked up after seeing The Departed.
Finally, I’d like to mention Thursday, whose CD A City by the Light Divided is pictured left. The CD isn’t all that new (summer of 2006), but they are coming to my school so I felt the need to mention them. I’ve seen them twice and they were pretty good both times. It’s a high octane show. Opening for them: The Starting Line and Paulson. It should be a fun time.
Over the last week or so, I have been using a website called Emusic to download music. It is a subscription based website where you pay monthly and get a monthly quota on song downloads. The subscriptions break down like this:
$10.00/month- 30 songs
$15.00/month- 50 songs
$20.00/month- 75 songs
I’d say that’s a pretty good deal. 75 songs works out to about 5 or 6 cds(12-15 songs per CD). That works out to $75-$90 (at $15/cd). So you save quite a bit. Plus, now EMusic is running a promotion where you get 25 free songs before your subscription starts. I got 100 songs for $20. That’s pretty tough to beat. But I have not mentioned the best part of Emusic. There is NO DRM. Zip. Zilch. Nada. You download the songs with EMusic’s download manager and do with them what you will. That being said, here is one complaint I have about Emusic.
Their music collection, while vast, is limited to certain record labels. It’s still a huge collection. I was able to blow through 100 downloads in one night and I want more. That means I’ll be signing on again for at least March. But when I did a search for bands I listen to, I didn’t find a lot, or what I did find was compilation albums. I hope that as EMusic grows, so does the list of labels they have to offer. But I would say it’s at least worth the 25 free downloads. Just don’t forget to cancel your subscription after that!
